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UCP Leader Jason Kenney has rekindled a debate over gay-straight alliances in schools after doubling down on an education plan that would do away with some of the legal protections for Alberta LGBTQ students and school staff.

“We support GSAs, we think kids should be able to set them up,” he said Tuesday in Edmonton, where he was releasing a plan on skills training. “However using the blunt instrument of the law to tell a teacher that under no circumstances can they communicate with parents is not a moderate approach.

It would eliminate changes the NDP introduced with Bill 24, which requires school principals to immediately grant student requests to form a gay-straight alliance and requires private schools to have publicly available policies to protect LGBTQ students. GSAs are student-run groups, supported by teachers, meant to create welcoming, safe spaces for sexual and gender minority students and their allies in schools. They are meant to foster a sense of belonging for youth who often feel marginalized.

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The NDP’s Bill 24 attempted to prevent school staff from outing LGBTQ kids by saying the only information they could give parents and guardians about a GSA was that one existed at the school.

Kenney said Monday the alternative Education Act would provide peer support while while respecting the basic religious freedom of faith-based independent schools.

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The move would return the law to how it read in 2015 after the former PC government passed its Bill 10. Those changes compelled all school principals — public, Catholic, Charter and private — to establish a gay-straight alliance or similar extracurricular club when a student requested one, and said students could choose a respectful club name.

The old Bill 10 did not require private schools to adopt policies that affirmed students’ human rights or spell out the consequences for bullying other students. Right now, all schools are required to post those policies prominently online and in school buildings.

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The old legislation didn’t work as intended, said Kristopher Wells, a MacEwan University associate professor specializing in sexual and gender minority youth and culture.

“Schools were still obstructing and denying students’ ability to start GSAs,” he said in an interview Tuesday, adding that some schools appointed faith leaders to sit in on the groups or provided frameworks for how they should be run.

In certain cases, membership lists were shared with parents, he said. “Basically it got to the point where students said there was no point in even having these groups.”

Wells accused Kenney of purposefully rolling back protections.

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“And here, Jason Kenney astoundingly is bringing the GSA issue back up front and centre into Alberta politics, an issue that many people have long resolved,” Wells said.

President of the Alberta Teachers’ Association Greg Jeffery said Tuesday that the NDP bill provided teachers with a clear expectation that the old legislation lacked.

“That provided comfort for teachers because they knew where they stood,” he said. “They weren’t going to be put in a conflicting situation on whether or not to disclose information.

“Discretion is one thing, but then there are pressures put on that teacher from places, and Bill 24 took care of those pressures. That was the clarity that teachers liked in Bill 24.”

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NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Kenney’s plan would have “cruel and hurtful consequences.”

“He is proposing once again to out LGBTQ kids in our schools who would join a GSA,” she said in Calgary, where she announced a health-care policy. “This matter has been settled. The debate has been had.”

“I would urge Mr. Kenney to talk to the experts, to the families and to the kids themselves, who will tell him that GSAs, and the ability to join them with your privacy respected, saves lives.

Alberta Party leader Stephen Mandel, who was also in Calgary Tuesday, slammed Kenney and called the plan “abhorrent.”

“This is about protecting children and I think that 40 per cent of the kids in the street are from the LGBTQ community,” he said. “By him making that decision, he threw those kids out the door. I think it’s terrible. I think he should be ashamed.”

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